Fears for thousands of missing Syrians

At least 28,000 people have vanished in Syria, victims of a state campaign to terrorise President Bashar al-Assad's subjects into submission, human rights groups said yesterday.

The alleged scale of the disappearances adds a further chilling dimension to Syria’s civil warPhoto: Asmaa Waguih/REUTERS

By Adrian Blomfield, Middle East Correspondent

4:39PM BST 18 Oct 2012

Employing a tactic reminiscent of the enforced disappearances of Stalin’s Russia or Idi Amin’s Uganda, agents of the regime are seizing suspected opposition sympathisers from their homes or even off the street, according to campaigners.

Avaaz, a global campaign network that aids opposition activists in Syria, said the names of 18,000 missing people had been collected, along with a further 10,000 cases of unnamed victims spirited into secret detention and torture facilities.

One Syrian-based human rights organisation reported up to 80,000 people had disappeared since the uprising began 19 months ago. The figures could not be verified independently.

“People are being snatched at night, on the street and when no-one is looking,” said Muhannad al Hasani, chairman of Sawasya, a Syrian human rights organisation.

“According to information given to us by our contacts in villages across Syria, we think there could be as many as 80,000 forcibly disappeared people.”

“Syrians are being plucked off the street by Syrian security forces and paramilitaries and being 'disappeared’ into torture cells,” said Alice Jay, campaign director at Avaaz.

Syrians interviewed by the group spoke of the despair caused by the disappearance of loved ones.

“If I know someone who was killed, I resign to God that they are dead,” said one man, identified as Yousef, whose sister was allegedly abducted in Homs six months ago.

“If I know someone who is injured, I still have hope they might heal. But the unknown the only word that expresses it is ’unknown’.”

Accounts by those who have been held in secret detention facilities, which are often located in school basements, suggest that those who are seized by state security forces face systematic torture.

Men, women and even children are regularly beaten, subjected to electric shocks and have their fingernails pulled out, former captives say. Many do not survive.

The alleged scale of the disappearances adds a further chilling dimension to Syria’s civil war, which has claimed an estimated 33,000 lives, according to opposition groups.

President Assad’s decision to unleash his air force in recent months has already caused a sharp leap in the number of both civilian and rebel fatalities reported every day.

But the enforced disappearances mean that even civilians not on the war’s frontline are falling victim to the government’s determination to intimidate Syria’s civilian population into quiescence.

“Whether it is women buying groceries or farmers going for fuel, nobody is safe,” said Ms Jay, campaign director for Avaaz.

“This is a deliberate strategy to terrorise families and communities. The panic of not knowing whether your husband or child is alive breeds such fear that is silences dissent.”

The Syrian government did not comment on the allegations but in the past it has denied carrying out human rights abuses.

Enforced disappearances in Syria are however not new, with some 7,000 people who went missing during the rule of Assad’s father and former president, Hafez al-Assad, are still unaccounted for.

Meanwhile, at least 44 people, including children, were reportedly killed in an airstrike that destroyed two block of flats and a mosque in the rebel-held town of Maarat al-Numan yesterday. Rescue workers said many more remained trapped under the rubble.